Menu Planning

A few months ago Matt and I sat down to review our monthly expenses and realized we were spending way too much money. The worst part was that a huge chunk of what we were spending money on was eating out. Even worse was that we were eating out so much because of poor planning. Either we were out running errands and it would have been too late to cook once we got back home, or it was that we had food in the house, but were missing ingredients for basically every recipe we could come up with. On top of that, I was pregnant and we all know how pregnant women can go a little crazy when they are craving something.

At the beginning of the year I decided that I was going to begin menu planning for our family and boy has it ever made the difference! Here are a few ways that my family has benefited from menu planning and how your family can too:

• Menu Planning Saves $$$ - Before menu planning, I would just walk through the store and buy what looked good. I didn't have certain meals in mind and on the rare occasion that I did, I would forget at least one key ingredient. Menu planning allows me to come up with several meals for the week and then create a grocery list of everything that I am going to need for those meals. It allows for me to cut back on impulse shopping because when I have a list, I'm less likely to buy stuff I don't need and less food goes to waste. In addition, menu planning can save you money by making it easier to buy in bulk. We like chicken, so it's great to be able to buy a big pack of chicken for $10 and be able o make 4 meals, rather then spending $6 for a smaller pack that will only make one meal.


• Menu Planning Saves Time - When you sit down once a week and create a menu, you already know what is going to be for dinner each night of the week. This saves me time because I can just pull what I need from the freezer the night before and it's ready for me the next day. In addition, planning out your meals means you don't have to run out to the store for an ingredient... (or make your husband stop and grab something on the way home from work, hehe - but I've never done that before!) Another way menu planning helps to save me time is that when I buy that big pack of chicken, I already know what four meals I am going to cook with it. So, when I'm cutting up the chicken for chicken fajitas on night one, I can also chop up the chicken for our chicken spiedie dinner on night two and throw it in the marinade overnight. Then I can slice up the chicken for night 3 for our chicken stir fry dinner and bag and freeze that and I can dice up the chicken that I need for chicken salad at the end of the week and bag and freeze that. Not only have I saved time by dividing and chopping the chicken for all my meals at once, but when it's time to cook those meals, I won't have to thaw and cut it that night AND that I'll only have to wash the cutting board one time instead of 4 times! Maybe that sounds a bit crazy to you, but with three little kids running around - EVERY minute of my day matters!


• Menu Planning Improves Nutrition - When you plan out your meals, it only makes sense that your they would be more balanced because you can sit down and count out your food groups in the beginning of the week. Menu planning reduces the chances that you'll swing by the drive-thru on the way home because you don't know what you are going to cook and because you are shopping from a list, you are more likely to have healthy foods within your reach.

The best part about menu planning is that there is no right or wrong way to do it! You can plan for one week, two weeks or a whole month. I personally shop one week at a time. I love doing my grocery shopping on Wednesday nights while the kids are at Awana. The grocery store is right down the road from the church, so I also save on gas because it's out of my way to go to the grocery store during the day while the kids are in school.

Likewise, you don't have to plan every single meal out. I know that my kids don't like to sit down for breakfast during the week. They would much rather grab something that they can take with them for the ride to school. Usually fruit or dry cereal and juice, so I like to stock up on a variety of grab-and-go kinds of breakfast items for them. In the morning when I'm trying to feed the baby and Matt is trying to get ready for work, the kids go right into the pantry and get what they want. Snacks around our house are usually the same way, with lots of variety in the fridge like yogurt, string cheese or fruit. I love sandwiches, so I keep a good variety of sandwich supplies handy and David and I are able to pick what we want at lunchtime. So when it comes time to make my grocery list for Breakfast, Lunch & Snacks, my list looks pretty similar from week to week. For us, the menu planning is key for dinner.

While I make a lot of different types of foods for my family, I LOVE my crock pot! I use it at least a few times a week to make my dinners. Why you ask? Well, I love that I can just toss all the ingredient in and let it do it's own thing. I love having that extra time to spend with the kids after they get home from school and get homework done. I don't want to be spending that time slaving in my kitchen. Not to mention that by 5pm, I'm starting to get a wee bit tired from a busy day, so I find that my life is much easier when I get up in the morning while Brayden is taking his morning nap and get the crock pot going!

If you like using a crock pot or if you have been looking for some good crock pot recipes you'll want to check this out. I have a whole lot of cookbooks, with my most recent to the collection being this one! Fix-It & Forget-It 5 Ingredients!!!! I love that the recipes have only 5 ingredients (well there are a few in there that have more then that, but most of them are only 5 ingredients). I picked a copy of this up in the magazine section of Wegmans and you can find it on display until 5/21/10. Three of my dinner plans for this week came from this book - Taco Soup, Creamy Chicken & Stuffing and North Carolina BBQ (Which was amazing!)

I would love to hear your suggestions for meal planning in my comments section! Or if you have a great crock pot recipe that you would like to share with others, feel free to post it in my comments. I always like to try out recipes that come recommended from others... sometimes I get a little nervous (Well, Matt does anyway) when I'm trying out a new recipe for the first time. Happy cooking!